This invention relates to social networking, and in particular to inferring user profile information in a social networking system from social information about a user.
Social networking systems store information about users and about the relationships between users. Social networking systems allow users to specify information describing them in their user profile, for example age, gender, and marital status of the user. Social networking systems further allow users to specify other users that they want to connect to via the social networking system. Users connected to a user in the social networking system are referred to as the connections of the user or friends of the user. Users frequently interact with other users via the social networking system, for example, by sending messages, via wall posts, by commenting on photos, or sending recommendations to other users. Social networking systems collect information describing actions associated with users as well as interactions between users over time.
User profile information for a user is often not complete and may not even be completely accurate. Users may not be interested in providing the information, they may forget to provide the information, or they may provide incorrect information. Users may provide incorrect information inadvertently, for example by making a mistake in entering the information. Sometimes users deliberately provide incorrect information; for example, a user may provide incorrect age in the user profile. Users may also forget to update their information when it changes. For example, a user may move to a new location and forget to update the user's geographical location, or a user may change jobs but forget to update their workplace description in the user profile. Sometimes, users may not have time to provide some user profile information accurately. For example, a user may not have time to think and articulate the user's likes and interests. Similarly, a user may have attended multiple educational organizations and may not enter all the details of the user's educational history.
Social networking systems can mandate that their users specify certain information. However, forcing users to provide user profile attributes may discourage users from becoming members of the social network. Moreover, mandating a particular user profile attribute does not guarantee that the user will provide accurate information.